Ain't nuthin' but a H-P thang
H-P is upping its advertising ante, spending a reported $40 million for an eight-week campaign. It’s the type of campaign that H-P hasn’t done in close to five years.
The company will engage Dr. Dre, comedian Rhys Darby and photographer Annie Leibovitz in an attempt to attract clients and customers seeking technology solutions. Why?
H-P head-shed feels public awareness of the technology-savvy are poorly served with the majority of folks thinking of H-P as only a printer manufacturer. Hello! Anybody home in Palo Alto who can think?
I am going to quote now from H-P vice president of brand strategy, Glenna Patton who said, “H-P stands for Reliability and Quality in the minds of their consumers, but the brand lacks a real differentiation in personality and distinction.”
Are you serious Glenna? H-P makes the best printers in the business and apparently that is not only my opinion. By H-P’s own admission, Americans, when asked what company they think of when they think of printers, nine out of 10 say, Hewlett-Packard.
H-P plans to air most of its weighted media buy during the March Madness NCAA Division I Basketball tournament. Again, Glenna, “Can we talk?” The men’s basketball tournament skews so much young, male testosterone into its world-wide demo that I bet they recognize Dr. Dre in the spot, but will they then run out and buy more H-P hardware or technology? Maybe, but there is high risk involved in not thinking this through strategically.
Using a traditional advertising to reach Dr. Dre’s fans might be better served using social media or interactive services and touch-screen PCs which just happens to be what H-P wants people to know about them.
Write this down, H-P’s global positioning is “Have a printer.” Don’t walk away from that, rather use that to project innovative solutions by connecting with your loyal printer customers using social media and a Web-based 2.0 consumer centric model and introduce them to your new technology one by one.
